Tomorrow is the day we take Joslin into the hospital for her brain scan. As I posted before, her eyes are crossing right now and so she will need eye muscle surgery. Before that happens though the doctor wanted to rule out the cause of the eyes crossing from being anything serious like a brain tumor or a pinched nerve. So we scheduled an MRI. She goes into tomorrow at 6:30am and they will give her a sedative so that she will fall asleep and not move. Supposedly it will take about 2 hours total for the scan and for her to come out of her drug induced haze.

We will give an update tomorrow about how it went. Hopefully we will have some cute pictures of her all loopy and such. For now, these will have to do. These were taken last Sunday because she was being so cute. Finally pulled the lighting gear our of boxes and put it to use.

This is so silly, I keep holding myself back from posting because if I miss a day or two I feel like so much has happened that I can’t write it all. Oh well, here I go.
Tonight at bedtime Noah got his picture of Christ off his dresser and said ” I know Jesus is real but do you really think this is what he looked like?, cause I saw another picture of him and he looked different.” I love his questions he is so sincere.

This morning we went to the Draper Temple open house. It was really neat. I am so glad our kids got that opportunity. Brandon is going to write in more detail about it later. After we were done we met Brandon’s dad for lunch at Chilli’s in Orem. He has been flying up from AZ for the past two weeks for some work that he is doing with one of the steel companies. Joslin has a very sweet relationship with Grandpa Beecroft. She loves him, and wants him to hold her over any one else besides Brandon and I. Well after we dropped him off at his hotel we were driving away and Joslin quietly said “bye bye Grandpa”. It was so cute. Last weekend we took Padre to see the new Joseph Smith movie in the Joseph Smith Building in Salt Lake. That is an amazing movie.

Last but not least. We have definitely had a big change in our life. Well especially Noah. Basically from the time Noah was about 2 weeks old he has been hurt by Hailey about 10 to 20 times a day. No I’m not exaggerating and no it is not normal sibling rivalry. We tried everything for years and nothing worked. When she would hurt him she would get her mouth washed out with soap, she would get time out, books taken away, movies taken away, apples taken away,we tried everything nothing worked. Sometimes Noah would walk past her and out of the blue she would throw what ever she had in her hand at his head, random things like that constantly. Noah prayed every night that Hailey would stop hurting him.
I am always researching and reading books on all of the things that Hailey deals with to try to make things better. Well it seemed to me from what I had read that Hailey had aggression and impulse control problems. When she was 5 we finally gave in to try medication but after 2 weeks of Hailey acting depressed and sad we took her off. When she first turned 8 we decided to try something again. This stuff made her even more aggressive to a very dangerous point. After that again didn’t work we took her off and both Brandon and I were discouraged. By the way we have done many natural things as well. We are still working on that. Well there is a medication called Risperadall which is tested and made specifically for kids that are on the Autism Spectrum. It has a mood stabilizer in it. What I had found out earlier, (which some Doctors forget to tell) is that if you have mood disorders that run in your family or the possibility that a person has a mood disorder they should not go on an anti-depressant unless they also take a mood stabilizer or it could make them worse or manic. Well we pretty much believe that to be true after what Hailey went through with the first two.

So after Noah came to me and said “Why isn’t Heavenly Father answering my prayer?, I pray to him every day so Hailey will stop hurting me”. I told him about how sometimes we have to go through hard times to make us stronger and more compassionate. I also told him sometimes Heavenly Father wants us to use our knowledge that we gain to make things better. I knew what I had learned and also knew after consistently disciplining her for her behaviors and it not working at all that she couldn’t stop herself. I also had come a long way from the negative stigma I had about medication. (Awesome article in the Ensign about 2 years ago titled the “Myths about Mental Illness”). I do realize there are a lot of people out there that abuse prescription drugs. There are also people that need these medications to be able to live as normal a life as they can.

That said, I asked the psychiatrist to start her on a very low dose .25 he thought she needed more but I just wanted to try. Well Hailey has not hurt Noah for 2 weeks now. Brandon and I can hardly believe the amazing change. We’re not running to Noah’s rescue or yelling for Hailey to stop hurting her brother every other minute like before. We hope this dose will continue to work for her at least for a while. Noah is so relieved, and at the end of the day I ask Noah if he’s gotten hurt (already knowing the answer) and he says ” No” and throws his arms around me with a huge smile!!!!!!

Now that we have that hopefully under control I want to focus with Hailey on hygiene, knowing where and where not to undress, closing the door in a public bathroom when she uses the toilet, Sensory problems (right now as always she yells and fights and cry’s when getting teeth brushed hair done, or getting dressed). She still has a hard time zipping, tying or buttoning anything and gets very frustrated when trying to get her coat on or shirt on. It is just so hard for her to maneuver her arms the right way. Her Occupational Therapist has always tried to help us help her in these areas. A lot lot more but at least we took the first step toward success. If we could get her to stop running out of sacrament meeting over and over that would be great. A couple weeks ago, she ran out of sacrament and I didn’t follow her because Brandon was out there with Joss. About 15 minutes later Noah says ” Mom I’m getting worried about Hailey” we went out and Brandon said he never saw her. We finally found her outside in the snow with no coat on.

I forgot to mention one more thing, Brandon and I and Hailey’s Resource teacher noticed. Since Hailey has started this medicine it has some how slowed her brain down enough that she has been able to express her self a little bit. Tonight, I was wrestling her to get her teeth brushed and she pinched my neck and said “how does that feel’? Brandon and I started laughing and I said “great communicating Hailey”. Ok, it’s 11:00 p.m. better end this.

Well, actually it’s last week. So I have been lazy. Sue me! These are some pictures that were taken over the last week. Enjoy!

Picture of the SLC power plant. I was walking out of work and this particular day I had to park in the upper levels of the garage. Because of that, I saw this scene. There has been so much smog and fog in the air that it made the sunset brilliant. Too bad that bill board is in the way.

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We were sitting at the dinner table the other night and all the kids were being so cute. Grabbed the camera real quick and shot these pics. Cute kids! (sometimes)

Of course Hailey had to copy what Noah was doing. Poor girl needs a dentist. Is there a dentist in the house?!?

Part of the reason we got the camera out was because of Joslin’s eyes. Many of you don’t know because we haven’t said anything yet. Jos needs eye muscle surgery. As we were traveling home from Arizona after Christmas, Juli looked back at Jos and her eyes were totally crossed! It really freaked us out. We got home and took her to the pediatrician right away. She recommend a pediatric ophthalmologist who we went and saw. He told us that she needs to have the one muscle weakened and the other strengthened in order to straighten in out. Apparently it is a safe and short procedure and we’ll let you know what happens when we know!

My poor princess. I truly am wrapped around her finger and it breaks my heart to see her like this. I mean really, it’s becoming a face ONLY a mother could love. She just might drop off my favorite princess status list.

Having a third kid is a lot of fun. Sometimes however it complicates things. Take for example our adventure last night at McDonald’s. First let me explain that the fast food restaurants here must have been in some bizzare competition to out-do the others in attracting customers. Each one has phenomenally humongous children’s place places. Slides and swings and climby things. It’s crazy. The kids love it and so sometimes we take them to McDonalds just to play on the indoor playground. So last night we decided to take them to McDonalds for dinner. I purchased 2 regular meals and 2 happy meals for Noah and Hailey. Joslin? She is only 20 months, she hasn’t earned a spot on the happy meal team and subsequently she must share off of mom and dad’s food at any restaurant we go to. Until last night.

As many of you know, Happy Meals come with a toy. Hailey and Noah get really excited for the toy and usually that comes out first before food. When they both pulled out the toy to see what it was I look over at Joslin and with both hands in the air looking longingly and with a bit of jealously at the toy doggy’s she turned to me and said, “Toy?” … “Toy?” Oh boy. That girl melts my heart. It was heartbreaking. I didn’t get her a happy meal toy and she wanted to know where her’s was.

Juli immediately wanted me to go get one and I must admit I almost did. The pressure was intense. Joslin staring at me, Juli staring at me, the other parents in the playground, staring at me. Right before I cracked however I noticed Noah and that he was not that into the dog toy he pulled out. I think I heard him muttering something under his breath about this not being a transformer. I quickly and deftly swooped down and whispered in his ear, “Noah I will give you a special treat if you share you dog toy with Joslin. Without hesitation or reservation he handed Joslin his toy and went about his business. I was impressed. Heartbreak averted! Whew!

Now my only problem was that the bribe worked. What could substitute for the toy? He didn’t mention anything to me for the rest of the night so I thought, wow I might just get out of having to do anything. But alas it was not to be. Quietly as the girls were going into the house and he was getting out of the car, he said, “Dad, what is my special treat?” Having already passed the Walmart where all white trash toys can be purchased and figuring he had forgot about our deal, I was at a loss. Fortunately I had purchased some candy bars to tempt my wife with during her daily workout. ( I can’t have her all hot and sexy while I am on my downward slide can I? ) So anywho, I gave Noah a choice, You can have a candy bar or you can watch an episode of Spider-Man the cartoon with Dad after the girls have gone to bed. Surprisingly he chose the one I didn’t expect. Can you guess which one? He is such a smart good kid.

On a different note, we submitted our papers for renting our home in Arizona. Hopefully we can get it rented pretty quick. We need to have it rented for a while before we can buy a home up here. Shane, Juli’s cousin, is getting ready to list the home we are in right now so we will have to figure out where we need to be pretty soon. We took pictures of the house so that he could post them with the listing. This has been a great house to be in and we are so thankful to Shane and his family for allowing us to stay here while we tried to get situated. Here was one of my favorite pictures that I took.:

Dad, if you take one more picture of me …. I swear I am gonna scream!